Sea
by Glittery-excuse-for-a Fae
Summary: Ariel and Killian Jones... Both hear the sea's call, both are put on a path that they cannot return from, but with both being hostile to each other where does the middle ground lie? can either of them find true happily ever after with this troupe of misfits and broken stories? Hook/Ariel


Ari sighed and put her hair up in a bun before starting her shift in her uncles shop.

"Good morning my dear."

"Morning uncle." She replied proffering her cheek to be kissed.

Gold kissed his nieces cheek and asked her how she slept.

"Fine I'm still having those wacky dreams, but other than that its fine."

There was a commotion outside the shop

"Where are you Croc... Come out of hiding, Tick tock!"

Ariel looked at her uncle puzzled.

"Stay here Ari, please its not safe out there"

"Who is that?"

"No-one"

"Uncle..."

"Someone from My past dearie... Please just stay here."

"Alright."

Unfortunately for her uncle Ari was a curious thing and just had to leave and check this shouting stranger out. So once her uncle had left the shop, she used the back door to creep into the alleyway and do what curious people do best and investigate.

Outside she saw a man with the most piercing green grey eyes she had ever seen, an earring dangled out of his left ear and he looked to be dressed in top to tale leather... No tell a lie his trousers were leather, his jacket was too by the look of it but he was wearing a red waistcoat on top of a white poet shirt.

He reminded her of... no that man was from her dreams nothing more.

"You said she would be here Croc."

"Well she's not maybe the curse forgot her... Such a pity."

Who were they talking about? Ari inched further to see if she could catch a glimpse of her uncles face.

The man noticed movement from the alleyway and stared at her.

Those eyes on her were piercing.

"I think you've been telling lies Croc... I will have her one way or another, you took Milah from me you will not take her, she is my property... Girl come here"

Ari pointed to herself.

"Yes you fish tail!"

She raised her eyebrows at this but walked forward unable to tear her eyes away from his.

"No don't take her, you have no need of her now. She doesn't realise who you are, probably doesn't even remember you"

"She will don't you worry croc!"

A few days after Hooks arrival the curse had been broken and Ariel knew who she was. Ariel. Princess Ariel for a start and the dreams she'd been having weren't dreams but reality... her life.

She had seen this pirate... Almost every day for three weeks when she had been a prisoner on his ship, in a small bathtub of salt water in his cabin.

_Captain liked pretty things, and to him she was the prettiest of the lot, he would admire the way that the sunlight shone off her scales while she would curse at him in mermish._

_Smee sometimes got food for her and he was kind enough, at one point offering her an old shirt because he disliked the way the captain would leer at her._

_As week one passed into week two Ariel stopped cursing the pirate captain as much mostly because it did no good when he didn't understand her, but also because on the first night of week two she heard him singing. it was as he was pouring over some charts in his cabin and she was watching with a little interest when he started to half murmur half sing some random song. She'd never heard a two legger sing before and so entranced was she she quite forgot to be wary of him._

_"Are you hungry little fish?"_

_"Yes thank you captain." She began almost forgetting that to speak with him would be worse than not uttering a word._

_"And what is it that fishes eat then?"_

_She shrugged "nothing that you'd have on ship"_

_"__**The**__ ship" he corrected her_

_She shrugged "Exactly, Smee has been giving me some food"_

_"Has he now?"_

_"Don't be angry, he's not so unkind as to see me starve."_

_"Are you saying that i've been neglecting you little fish?"_

_"I'm not crying neglect, just borderline starvation."_

_"You haven't been crying at all you've been pretty silent on the whole."_

_"Only for fear of angering you, I was under the impression that you liked all your pets to be silent and not have an opinion."_

_"Not true how many of my other treasures here could talk?"_

_"None" she replied wishing that he would stop questioning her, wishing she could be silent again._

_"Then seeing as you are my only treasure to talk I command you do so whilst in my presence."_

_"And if I refuse?" she asked._

_"Then I'll have to sell you to the highest bidder, its what happens to all my treasures when I grow bored of them love."_

_"They must have all displeased you greatly then as I see none here in your cabin."_

_"When a man has so much gold and so many trinkets, it is not long before he wants the next better thing."_

_"By that you mean me?"_

_"Well a siren is hard to catch and bloody annoying on the ears"_

_"You fool I am a siren, a siren and a mermaid are equal things. I could open my mouth and condemn you to davy jones with just a few notes."_

_"I know you won't."_

_"How?"_

_"If you do instigate the aforementioned singing, then the crew will have no need to keep away from you, I darling am the only thing saving you from getting taken by the crew and yes by taken I do mean exactly what that pretty blush seems to suggest your thinking."_

_"You kidnapped me!" She spat._

_"And now I am the only thing standing in the way of you being utterly debauched, rather ironic don't you think? Now what was that about singing?"_

_Ariel turned her face away from the pirate captain and resolved not to speak for the rest of the night._

_Her resolve was broken when he returned from deck swaying slightly although the tide and waves were not harsh enough to suggest a storm._

_"Whats going on out there, are we under attack?"_

_He seemed to find this funny and collapsed onto his bed._

_"What is going on if we are being attacked I demand to know, if we are heading for a typhoon or squall then get me up on deck so as I can get us out of the way before you and all your men die."_

_"You'd like that wouldn't you?" The pirate slurred._

_"What to save all of your lives, not really no, but then again if this ship goes down to Davy then I am presumably stuck in this cabin. I haven't quite mastered how to swim through keyholes yet." She spat back._

_He laughed again "there is no squall, we are not being attacked and neither is there a typhoon."_

_"Well why were you listing and weaving as if there was one?"_

_"Rum my dear." He mumbled._

_"I can't run you insufferable pirate, I lack legs."_

_"Well maybe you should invest in some and you wouldn't be such a trouble to me with all your squawking and moaning."_

_"You haven't even fed me today." She replied raising her chin showing that she would not be baited._

_"Because we have nothing to feed you on, all we have is rum... We're out of food love."_

_"How can we be out of food?" She asked him, while at the same time wishing he would stop calling her Love... She was not his or anyones Love._

_"The store of fresh things we had has gone, whatever Smee gave to you whenever he gave it was the last of what little food we had."_

_"How far away from land are we?"_

_"Two maybe three days."_

_"Let me go, I can get you food, I can make that trip in a matter of hours, and bring you a supply ship, you'd never even have to dock." She thought that maybe this rum, in addition to loosening Captains temper and sharp tongue may have dulled his senses enough so that he didn't notice that what she was actively asking for was an escape._

_"No, we need other things too not just food, and after all I have a pretty little treasure to use as a barter."_

Ariel woke up later than she would have liked to someone shaking her awake.

"Up you get treasure."

She rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but a pointed metal object under her chin stopped her from moving. "I said Up treasure! Do not think to disobey me"

She cursed the man but got on her feet. "Where are you taking me?"

"Back to my ship."

"Thinking that if you stick me in a tub of seawater my tale will magically grow back, because it really won't. It was taken from me, I paid a high price for my dreams Captain. Not all of us can steal what we want to make us happy."

"Up you silly excuse for a mermaid, all I need is your voice, what the crew choose to do then is up to them."

"You always were a heartless son of a bitch" she spat.

"Your words wound me love."

"At least once you had the decency to deflect your crews advances, and not have them slime over me like salivating dogs."

"Don't romanticise me fish, I think you'll find I don't like sharing what is mine by right, that is all"

"Keep telling yourself that Captain, one day you may believe it. Now what am I to sing for you? Someone you need to drown is there?"

"I need a portal hom.e"

"Portals are a little beyond my remit Captain."

"You'd better hope not, or I will have no choice but to let you sing yourself to Davy Jones."

"You can't just kidnap me!"

"I did once I am again, after all, you have no-one here that will miss you."

"Captain I can do drownings, they are simple, portals need a lot of focus and I can't do that if you are threatening me."

"Well what do you suggest then darling?"

Ariel shrugged "I dunno food would be good."

"There is no food on my ship."

"Well then best get me to Granny's"

"You want me to eat with you?"

"Not if you don't want to no, I'd hate to ruin your fearsome reputation."

"I just assumed that you wouldn't want to eat with one of your captors."

"I hardly think you'd let me out of your sight." She smirked.

"Well no I wouldn't." He leered at her.

"Precisely so I have no choice, can we go or am I to be sitting here all day waiting to be fed."

"Pick her up men, we will carry her to the food if she will no chose to walk."

Ariel rolled her eyes as she was placed into the booth at Granny's. Two crewmen either side of her and Hook opposite her.

"Don't think that this constitutes me helping you." Ariel muttered, watching Granny walking toward them.

"Don't think this constitutes me caring a damn about your welfare fish."

Ariel rolled her eyes and ordered some coffee and pancakes, not waiting for Hook to order anything.

Granny gave her a glance to check she was alright and Ariel smiled reassuringly even though she was bone weary, weary of always being someones prize, She wanted her freedom, and for a while as Ari, she had had that, but now here she was imprisoned again by the man who had first ensnared her no less.

"if I do this, if I do somehow sing up this portal does that mean that we're done?"

"Perhaps, I'll have to take you with me of course, as shall we say insurance."

"You said it yourself no-one cares about me here, I'll be another fairytale character that slipped through the net."

"The Croc would miss you it's a good enough reason"

"I haven't said two words to him since I got my memories back thank you, he's nothing to me."

"Such venom and for once not directed at me."

"What can I say I have redeeming qualities when I think they have been deserved"

"I feel honoured."

"Didn't say you deserved them, just at the moment I hate you marginally less than I hate Gold... Rumplestiltskin"

He inclined her head to the cup that Ariel didn't even realise was in front of her.

"Coffee darling... drink it up I hear its terrible when it's cold."

"Oh I don't know about that, some things are better when their cold wouldn't you say?"

"Aye lass, they are." Hook wondered belatedly if there wasn't some way in which the two of them were similar.

_"There is nothing similar about us Captain, trust me on that, you are a murderer and a scoundrel I am mermaid."_

_"You're __**A **__ Mermaid, Love... Here." He passed her a book._

_She sniffed it before opening it. "What treasure is this?"_

_"It's a book Lass, not a treasure"_

_"Well what's it for, does one eat it because if at this point you've had food in your cabin all this time, I will somehow get out of this prison and batter you to death with my tail!"_

_"No Lass you read it, while your knowledge of our..." He tried to stop himself from mentioning the word tongue, as that would lead him down all sorts of lovely avenues in his brain that the fish would not appreciate. "...Of how we communicate is vast for a mermaid, you lack some of the better... simpler words that string things together."_

_"I can only speak not read."_

"_A challenge, I accept, come I shall read to you for a little while after dinner, and then you shall read it to yourself while get the crew's roster sorted for the night"_

_She smiled up at him._

_"Maybe we are a little similar, we both enjoy the finer things in life." She murmered_

_"Chapter one, Marley was dead to begin with..." She listened to his voice caress the words and realised it was a story, about an apparently dead man... still Captain was giving it life, meaning and she listened enraptured._

_She watched his mouth form the words form the book with fascination._

_During the next two nights she took an interest in the book, and the maps and charts on his cluttered desk._

_"...But what are they for?"_

_"They help us to know where to go"_

_"But I thought you were a pirate.. don't all pirates know where to go?"_

_He smiled and to Ariel it was like the clouds parting, leaving his stormy face the brighter for it._

_"Generally yes we do know where to go."_

_"See, I always thought that you just went wherever the wind took you." She replied, trying to act like she hadn't noticed the lightening of his face._

_"When there is little wind we need to know where there is a nearby port, in a storm we need to now where to hole up until it passes, therefore I keep an eye on the maps and charts."_

_"We need no such things we go where the current takes us and make the best of what is there."_

_"Well then maybe you are the better race love."_

_"True freedom though you have that Captain, the ability to go anywhere, see anything, to be on the land and at sea... you are bound by nothing and no-one... My freedom is that of a cage, not able to walk upon the land and always moving with my clan."_

_"Freedom is one thing, belonging is another."_

_That afternoon sitting with the captain in his cabin while they poured over the places they had each been Ariel began to feel more like a guest than a prisoner._

_The crew had also noticed the change in the captains behaviour. He drunk less and smiled more._

_Some called it a blessing, few however called it the mermaids curse, she was bewitching him, a slow entrancement so that he would never sell her but release her._


End file.
